Christmas cards

I have a great dog. Has he endured in his 10 years at our house being pulled around the show ring by a someone half his size, being ridden by someone else nearly his size and endlessly waiting patiently in line behind three cats to come in the door. Now, he is being decorated. Well, not like a brave military hero is decorated – literally decorated with lights and photographed repeatedly by his overzealous owner. This was my Christmas card idea for this year and fortunately he didn’t object (not that he ever has) to having his picture repeatedly taken over the course of about fifteen minutes.

Lucky for me he is not a hyperactive Lab, as are some. As long as he is allowed to lay on his bed, the photo shoot was okay with him.

I took the pictures on 100 ISO at F4. The shutter speed was calculated by the camera’s computer at around five to seven seconds for each shot. He only moved during two of the shots (I told you, he’s wonderful). Those two shots were discarded and I was left with five that I really liked. I showed the finalists to my photography students and asked for their recommendation. This shot was the overwhelming winner. The inside of the Christmas cards remind everyone to slow down and take time to enjoy the season.

Hopefully, everyone will do the same. Shoot lots of Christmas pics. 🙂

More HDR

As I said in a previous post, I’m lovin’ this HDR processor. Here are some fall shots I took.

Fused

 

tonemapped

fused

 

These were all shot on a Canon Rebel, set on AV at f5.6. The auto exposure bracketing was set at +2, 0 and -2.

Keep shooting. Remember to have fun 🙂

 

More folk art

I posted several weeks ago that I visited the Kentucky Folk Art Center on the campus of Morehead State University. This is my last grouping of art from that gallery.

This time, the photos are all of work by the same artist, Linvel Barker. His whimsical carvings were featured on the entire top floor of the museum. All of them made me smile. Here are a few of them.

I love their little tiny feet. These were all shot with a Canon Rebel on full manual setting. They were a bit tricky because of the variance in lighting conditions. This was one of those situations where you could not have set your camera on auto, which would have triggered the flash, which would have only reflected off of the glass cases. I kept my f-stop on 5.6 for all the shots and, since I didn’t have a tripod, I had to keep the shutter speed above 1/60. So the only thing I could really adjust was the ISO. For most of the shots, it was set on 800 or 1600.

Keep shooting 🙂